Category Archives: European Fascism

Hugo Schmidt, occassional contributor to this blog, has his first piece published in Standpoint. And very good it is too.

The death of socialism has been like the fall of some rainforest giant, leaving a space for lesser growths. For most of the 20th century socialism — the government control of the economy — was the aim of most left-wing movements, no matter their disagreements about its form or the means to achieve it. With socialism discredited by its real practice and the success of capitalism, other movements, some of which would have once been anathema to left-wingers, have filled the ideological space. Where Marxism once promised industrial abundance, environmentalism condemns abundance as evil. Whereas once it was hoped that all divisions of race, nation and creed could be superseded by universal cosmopolitanism, identity politics proclaims that men are the inescapable product of their background and it is wrong to expect them to abandon it.

we at the spittoon have for some time been a target for the not-very-impressive “spinwatch” site, which appears to be the hobby-horse of strathclyde university’s answer to bob pitt, dr david miller. dr miller, we hardly need remind you, appears to think that spittoon authors are without exception rabid “neo-cons”, by which he appears to mean some sort of catch-all imperialism of liberal democracy imposed by force of arms on the bucolic, picaresque and entirely pacifist natives of the middle-east and south asia. as if this wasn’t bad (or inaccurate) enough, we are also supposed to be apostles of islamophobia; apparently it isn’t clear enough to someone who is supposed to be an academic that what we oppose is the virulent political ideology known as islamism – as well as other forms of religious and political extremism; jewish, christian, atheist, muslim, ethnicity-based – we are equal-opportunity anti-extremists, or we certainly try to be.

Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian terrorist who was responsible for the massacre of 76 innocent people, was motivated by his belief in Eurabia. This, as the name suggest, is a political neologism that predicts that Europe will become a majority Muslim continent in the next few decades. It cites Muslim immigration and high birth rates amongst Muslims to back up its claims and often uses quotes from extreme Islamist organisations to lend itself credibility.

In my view, proponents of this theory are partially responsible for creating an atmosphere of fear and suspicion that is eroding cohesion in European societies and creating animosity towards Muslims. This atmosphere is also fuelling the far-right in Europe and encouraging them to direct their vitriol towards Muslim communities and those who support the existence of multi-faith communities in Europe.

Meet Alan Lake, the British millionaire who finances the EDL, directs the online content of the extreme far-right in the UK and is believed to be the spiritual leader of Breivik:

The Guardian runs a more extensive profile of the man after it has surfaced that he wrote an onlne article in which he conducted a wishful thought experiment on torturing and executing UK’s political and religious leaders.

On 23 May 2010, Alan Lake posted on his 4 Freedoms website an article outlining his belief that “in 20 or 30 years the UK will start to fragment into Islamic enclaves”. He went on: “It’s time we decide… who we will force in the Islamic enclaves (and who we will execute if they sneak out.) By forcing these liberal twits into those enclaves, we will be sending them to their death at worst, and at best they and their families will be subjected to all the depredations, persecution and abuse that non-Muslims worldwide currently ‘enjoy’ in countries like Pakistan… It will be great to see them executed or tortured to death.”

i’ve not posted for a while, mostly because of pressure of work, but there are a number of things which are currently causing me to more or less lose sleep.

recently, i gave up posting on pickled politics, partly because of the level of personal animosity i was facing, but mostly just in frustration at my apparent inability to get my point across. now, i suppose i have nobody very much to blame for that apart from myself, but i’ve never felt that was a problem before now. now, i think i’m starting to work out what it is that is bothering me; certainly, it’s not about the denizens of one blog, or even the blogosphere, or even the media. it’s not any one set of views, not any one person, but a set of trends, a collective movement i sense in wider society.

Do you remember Sameh Habeeb? He’s a Palestinian activist with very close links to Palestinian Return Centre(PRC). He’s the chap who wrote an email to Nothing British to complain that the PRC was not anti-Semitic because they had invited ”NORMAN Frankensteine who is Jew”. He meant Norman Finkelstein, of course.

Mr Habeeb is also the editor of The Palestine Telegraph(PT), which has close links to the pro-Hamas PRC. The PRC lists the Istanbul Declaration signatory and MCB Deputy-Secretary, Daud Abdullah, as a senior researcher and is close to Clare Short MP and Lib Dem Baroness Jenny Tonge. Its patron is the Daily Mail journalist, Lauren Booth.

Last November the PRC invited the Hungarian neo-fascist MEP, Kristina Morvai, to its December conference in London. It then withdrew the invitation after pressure from Nothing British.